[CharliMarley]

I have a friend who is a infectious disease Professor and he gets so mad when he hears about these things happening all the time. And as Peter Paul and Mary sang -"when will they ever learn". We didn't have this at all when my children were babies, because everyone was vaccinated.

[Gossipgirl]

I'm not sure getting into a debate over vaccinations is a good idea however I do agree with you regarding whooping cough.

I was 16 weeks pregnant when I had whooping cough I ended up in hospital and honestly I felt like death my oxygen was so low I couldn't stop coughing enough to take a breath I really have no idea how I go through it because everyday I thought I would stop breathing or pass out.
When I was in hospital there were 2 newborn babies also with whooping cough and it was horrible they were so small and the lungs were not coping at all I felt horrible and so glad I vaccinated my daughter so she didn't catch it from me at the time.

I hope the babies pulled through like I did.

[MakeLoveNotBacon]

People still get it when they are vaccinated. This probably has nothing to do with vax numbers - isn't this a new strain?

[Lolpigs]

Yeah they have only just realised WC is more like the Flu than like say measles. It adapts and changes. They have changed the vaccine too but no vaccine gives you 100% protection sadly.

Outbreaks almost always start with an unvaccinated person however.

[SnazzySass]

I was tested for whooping cough last week. My GP said my cough could be that or a post viral thing because sometimes the vaccination doesn't work.I had had the cough for 3 weeks so if it was whooping cough would have shared it around. I and all my family have been vaccinated since before my DS was born. On that basis I think the problem is a lack of understanding about whooping cough and its symptoms. If you are worried about it how about petitioning the government to make it better known and the vaccine cheaper so people have an incentive to get it. $50 is a lot of money to many people.

[Sunnycat]

Im sure there was a report recently that showed the majority of children who contracted WC were vaccinated.

[Lolpigs]

Yeah sunny due to the change in vaccine, and new strain and no follow up with adult boosters. They thought the old vaccine lasted, without a booster but they were wrong.

They really do need to get on top of it, and start getting people to have their adult booster in large numbers, and subsidise it especially seeing as the new vaccine needs 3 doses before bubs are covered.

[tenar]

Im sure there was a report recently that showed the majority of children who contracted WC were vaccinated.

That should be the case, actually. Unfortunately, it's a meaningless statistic which is often trotted out by people who don't understand probability (especially those who are anti-vaccines already).

In any situation where most people are vaccinated but the vaccine is imperfect, you will get more people catching the disease who are vaccinated but the vaccine didn't work for them than you get of people who are unvaccinated.

IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT BEING UNVACCINATED IS SAFER - IT (usually, barring medical contraindications for some individuals) ISN'T.

Think of it rather this way, if the whooping cough vaccine is 84% effective against the disease, then you have about a 16% chance of getting it if you are vaccinated and exposed to the virus.

If you are unvaccinated and exposed to the virus, you have about a 100% chance of getting it. Clearly more dangerous...

[LookMumNoHands]

Like a PP, I had whooping cough last year, and went undiagnosed for 3 weeks until the blood test confirmed that I did indeed have it. So I would have infected people, I'm sure. I've also had all my immunisations.

[*Spikey*]

Sunnycat, its a statistical thing.

As around 80-90% of children are vaccinated against WC, it make sense that if it doesn't provide 100% protection, then 'more' children will get WC.

So, imagine there are 2 million children in Australia and 90% are vaccinated. That means 200,000 children are not vaccinated, but 1.8 million children are. If the vaccine is only 80% effective, then only 1.44 million children are protected, and 360,000 are not.

What you really want to compare is the rate of infection between vaccinated and non-vaccinated kids, because otherwise the 'rate' is skewed.

For vaccination to be ineffective, the rate of the disease (and the severity) needs to be the same or higher amongst vaccinated children when compared to non-vaccinated children.

In fact, for Australia:

So if immunisation programs have been successful, why is whooping cough still a problem?

Prevents severe illness and death

The short answer, according to immunisation expert Professor Peter McIntyre, is because the pertussis vaccine is good at reducing the risk of severe disease and death, but is not necessarily going to prevent infection altogether.

"It's not like measles vaccine where if you have the vaccine you just won't get measles infection," says McIntyre, director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases at the University of Sydney.

"The pertussis vaccine is decreasing the amount of infection to some extent, but mostly what it's doing is decreasing how sick you get."

This means children who might otherwise have got extremely sick and ended up in intensive care on oxygen or even died, now get a milder infection or sometimes show no symptoms at all.

Also if you've had the vaccine you're less likely to transmit the disease to those around you.

However, it does mean that a significant proportion of infections will occur in vaccinated individuals.

"You'd expect that because if 95 per cent of kids are immunised and if you find that 95 per cent of the cases are also immunised, then that means that the vaccine's not doing anything," McIntyre says.

But that's not the case. Only about 70 per cent of reported cases of whooping cough occur in people who have had the pertussis vaccine.

"That's telling you that the vaccine is working and if you do the numbers, that equates to about an 80 per cent effectiveness of the vaccine."

This article is a good explanation about the rates.

So, the bottom line is that more non-vaccinated people get WC, as a percentage, than vaccinated people. Vaccination is playing safe on the percentages.